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  • 100 Years Ago.

    Programme of the Liberal Party (1922 election)

    It stands for:

    Peace and disarmament made secure through the League of Nations.

    The prompt revision and settlement of Reparation and Inter-Allied Debts.

    Drastic Economy in public expenditure and the abandonment of the policy of military adventures abroad.

    Fulfilment by the community of its responsibility for securing the workers against the hardships of unemployment, co-operation between Capital and labour, and honest and fair treatment of organised labour as the only basis of industrial peace.

    Unqualified Free Trade with the immediate repeal of the Safeguarding of Industries Act and similar protective measures.

    The defence of such essential social services as Education, Housing, and Public Health.
    Political and legal equality for women and men.

    A comprehensive reform of the existing Land System, including the Taxation and Rating of Land Values.

    The democratic reform of our Licensing System.

    Re-adjustment of our electoral system by the introduction of Proportional Representation....


    The moment has come to restore Liberalism to its rightful place in the councils of the Nation.

    http://www.libdemmanifesto.com/1922/1922-liberal-manifesto.shtml
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
  • Jonathan said:

    Breaking News, May to apply education policy to the NHS.

    At the new "grammar hospitals", doctors will be able select the cases they know they can treat. Results are going to go through the roof.

    The more difficult, chronic and terminal cases will be able to go to "faith hospitals".

    Teaching hospitals are the grammar schools of the NHS. Discuss.
  • On a wider political context point, it seems the 'dead cat' that was dropped on the table on Thursday has worked and no one is discussing Brexit this weekend.

    Although it seems Liam Fox didn't like the look of the cat, so he's thrown his own fat, lazy one on the table just for good measure.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122
    Icarus said:

    If grammar schools are better -the point of the exercise - the others must be worse.

    The point is different not better. Maybe you should have gone to a grammar school :)
  • 100 Years Ago.

    Programme of the Liberal Party (1922 election)

    It stands for:

    Peace and disarmament made secure through the League of Nations.

    The prompt revision and settlement of Reparation and Inter-Allied Debts.

    Drastic Economy in public expenditure and the abandonment of the policy of military adventures abroad.

    Fulfilment by the community of its responsibility for securing the workers against the hardships of unemployment, co-operation between Capital and labour, and honest and fair treatment of organised labour as the only basis of industrial peace.

    Unqualified Free Trade with the immediate repeal of the Safeguarding of Industries Act and similar protective measures.

    The defence of such essential social services as Education, Housing, and Public Health.
    Political and legal equality for women and men.

    A comprehensive reform of the existing Land System, including the Taxation and Rating of Land Values.

    The democratic reform of our Licensing System.

    Re-adjustment of our electoral system by the introduction of Proportional Representation....


    The moment has come to restore Liberalism to its rightful place in the councils of the Nation.

    http://www.libdemmanifesto.com/1922/1922-liberal-manifesto.shtml

    "A comprehensive reform of the existing Land System, including the Taxation and Rating of Land Values."

    We are still waiting.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.
  • PeterCPeterC Posts: 1,274
    edited September 2016
    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
    That was always the true problem which needed to be tackled in the 1960s. The grammars were outstanding and should have been left alone. The poor status of the SecMods and the failure to follow through with Technical High Schools should have been the object of policy.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited September 2016

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    Grammar schools are not my specialist subject. Study after study have found they don't do what they are trumpeted as doing. @Richard_Tyndall mentioned a Sutton Trust report which said they do indeed aid social mobility (I think, he might have been making a related point). Having turbo googled a bit I can't find it. Although there are plenty like this Grammar Schools widen the gap betwen rich and poor

    So would I seek to abolish existing grammar schools? It seems even with their imperfections it might be too disruptive to do so, but if they don't do what they are supposed to do, then I wouldn't be against making them into free schools or somesuch.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
    So if you're bright you've got find your own way in life?

    I've said on here before that I have two gripes with my education. One, my school didn't have a sixth form. I got absolutely no guidance from my school on what A-Levels to pick with a view to what I could do at university. Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).
  • Moses_Moses_ Posts: 4,865
    Jonathan said:

    Its got the left chewing bricks, what's not to like.??.

    Maybe May is trying to save Labour with this bonkers grammars for all policy. It's refreshing for Labour to feel united and closer to public sentiment.

    Errrr.... No

    A snap poll for Sky News finds 60% of people agree that the ban on selective schools should be lifted
    http://news.sky.com/story/most-people-back-theresa-mays-grammar-school-plans-poll-10570433

    Parents are crying out for new grammar schools, so why should hypocritical Lefties deny them?
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/08/parents-are-crying-out-for-new-grammar-schools-so-why-should-hyp/

    Nice graph as well......

    "First we asked: “Would you support or oppose re-introducing grammar schools across the whole of Great Britain?’” The result was emphatic. Just over half the public, 53 per cent, support the idea while only 20 per cent oppose it. (The remaining 27 per cent don’t know.) Though the margins vary—Conservatives and Ukip supporters back grammar schools far more emphatically than Labour or Lib Dem voters—supporters out number opponents in every political and demographic group"

    http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/peter-kellner/should-we-bring-back-grammar-schools


    As always the lefties are out of touch....
  • Jonathan said:

    PClipp said:

    MTimT said:

    RobD said:

    on topic - I sort of agree. Perhaps I am not old enough to realise just how great grammars were, and it is especially confusing if every school gets a chance to be a grammar.
    I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....

    Rob, you forget that all our kids are above average.
    More than that, Mr T. All our children are in the most brilliant 20%. The other 80% will have to go to secondary moderns, and the Conservatives have no plans for creating any of those.

    The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.

    First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
    Whilst we have been distracted by Brexit fallout and Labour woes, this government has been chalking up a record number of policy u turns, and defeats.

    They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.

    Yep, this is - at best - an utterly mediocre government. It couldn't be otherwise with figures such as Fox, Johnson, Davis, Greening and Leadsom sitting round the cabinet table. As I wrote in my piece last week, this may actually help get rid of Corbyn in the end. Trailing a hapless, right wing Tory government in the polls and losing out to it electorally will eventually lead to the non-lunatic Corbynistas (arounf 50% I reckon) to question their support for Corbyn. That process has clearly begun among the pre-September 2015 cohort.

    It's good to keep optimistic, but it doesn't look like the non-lunatics will get rid of Corbyn in time for the next GE.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
    So if you're bright you've got find your own way in life?

    I've said on here before that I have two gripes with my education. One, my school didn't have a sixth form. I got absolutely no guidance from my school on what A-Levels to pick with a view to what I could do at university. Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).
    Bright kids do find a way as you did. The less bright need more help and intervention to make them useful citizens.
  • IcarusIcarus Posts: 885
    felix said:

    Icarus said:

    If grammar schools are better -the point of the exercise - the others must be worse.

    The point is different not better. Maybe you should have gone to a grammar school :)
    Guisborough Grammar.
  • With the willy waving by Juncker et al about how britain must be given a crap deal to make them suffer pour les encouragement of the autres...

    I am reminded of Rhodesian UDI. When this small land locked country declared UDI Wilson imposed sweeping sanctions with the co operation of the rest of the UN essentially blocking trade with them - far more than a few WTO tariffs.

    It was confidently asserted that Rhodesia would be brought to its knees in weeks. Alas for Wilson their economy boomed they managed to thumb their nose at the international community for years.
  • FregglesFreggles Posts: 3,486

    Stop criticising Liam Fox.

    I know how a perfect excuse to do a thread slagging him off.

    Dear Liam.
    You are less welcome than sandpaper underpants after a night of ingesting ghost chilies in the sauna.
    In electoral terms you are comparable to a bad smell that refuses to dissipate, despite your repeated failings.
    You imagine yourself a leader of men but in reality you are irrelevant to all but a few halitosis-ridden pub bores.

    A period of silence on your part would be welcome.

    Regards,
    The United Kingdom
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122
    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    You are talking about Grammar schools 50 years ago - not the way they operate now and could operate in the future. It is in teresting that it is the opponents of academic selection who disparage those not suitable for a Grammar school as therefore useless/failures/second best , etc The answer is to ensure a range of schools suitable for a range of abilities. this is near impossible in Comprehensives of less than at least 2500 students - a school size which creates many of its own issues.
  • mattmatt Posts: 3,789
    DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.
    I find it quite odd that the same people who want some stability in the pensions regime (correctly) are seemingly quite happy for schools to be a political football and subject to endless revolution. I guess that everyone considers themself an expert when it comes to education.
  • Jonathan said:

    PClipp said:

    MTimT said:

    RobD said:

    on topic - I sort of agree. Perhaps I am not old enough to realise just how great grammars were, and it is especially confusing if every school gets a chance to be a grammar.
    I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....

    Rob, you forget that all our kids are above average.
    More than that, Mr T. All our children are in the most brilliant 20%. The other 80% will have to go to secondary moderns, and the Conservatives have no plans for creating any of those.

    The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.

    First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
    Whilst we have been distracted by Brexit fallout and Labour woes, this government has been chalking up a record number of policy u turns, and defeats.

    They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.

    Yep, this is - at best - an utterly mediocre government. It couldn't be otherwise with figures such as Fox, Johnson, Davis, Greening and Leadsom sitting round the cabinet table. As I wrote in my piece last week, this may actually help get rid of Corbyn in the end. Trailing a hapless, right wing Tory government in the polls and losing out to it electorally will eventually lead to the non-lunatic Corbynistas (arounf 50% I reckon) to question their support for Corbyn. That process has clearly begun among the pre-September 2015 cohort.

    Utterly mediocre governments are what we have almost continually in this country.

    And anyone who Labour could replace Corbyn with would be - at best - utterly mediocre as well.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    PeterC said:

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
    That was always the true problem which needed to be tackled in the 1960s. The grammars were outstanding and should have been left alone. The poor status of the SecMods and the failure to follow through with Technical High Schools should have been the object of policy.
    Agree. Level up not down. The pupil premium was one of the coalition's better ideas in education. A Lib Dem idea as I recall.
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921

    Pulpstar said:

    Icarus said:

    Because Grammar schools will be better otherwise they would not attract pupils

    Not neccesarily, iirc @Mortimer reckoned his grammar was underfunded.
    They have fewer disadvantaged children so they get less money per pupil.
    It is such a bonkers policy. Schools are state funded - teachers still need to be paid, buildings maintained when the customers are better off.
  • IcarusIcarus Posts: 885
    "A comprehensive reform of the existing Land System, including the Taxation and Rating of Land Values."

    Yes -- Site Value Rating! - politics is a long game.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Moses_ said:

    Jonathan said:

    Its got the left chewing bricks, what's not to like.??.

    Maybe May is trying to save Labour with this bonkers grammars for all policy. It's refreshing for Labour to feel united and closer to public sentiment.

    Errrr.... No

    A snap poll for Sky News finds 60% of people agree that the ban on selective schools should be lifted
    http://news.sky.com/story/most-people-back-theresa-mays-grammar-school-plans-poll-10570433

    Parents are crying out for new grammar schools, so why should hypocritical Lefties deny them?
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/08/parents-are-crying-out-for-new-grammar-schools-so-why-should-hyp/

    Nice graph as well......

    "First we asked: “Would you support or oppose re-introducing grammar schools across the whole of Great Britain?’” The result was emphatic. Just over half the public, 53 per cent, support the idea while only 20 per cent oppose it. (The remaining 27 per cent don’t know.) Though the margins vary—Conservatives and Ukip supporters back grammar schools far more emphatically than Labour or Lib Dem voters—supporters out number opponents in every political and demographic group"

    http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/peter-kellner/should-we-bring-back-grammar-schools


    As always the lefties are out of touch....
    It's a bit like surveys on divorce - something like 80% say they won't get divorced, knowing that the stats for divorce are around 50% (not sure the exact figures but it is the gist).

    Likewise, would I like a better school for my little prince and princess to go to, regardless of the fact that they are much more likely to not get in? Oh yes.

    Plus there is the well-motivated parent angle. Of course well-motivated parents want grammar schools. The issue we face, however, is that the children of non well-motivated parents deserve a good education also.
  • VerulamiusVerulamius Posts: 1,429
    If there is entrance to the grammar at 11+ 14+ and 16+, does this mean that the grammar increases in pupil numbers in year 10 and 12, or does it lose pupils so that the end of year tests in year 9 result in some pupils departing the grammar and going to another school?
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122
    DavidL said:

    Still can't help feeling that the clever grammar school kids have been moved out and the secondary modern stream has taken over. Would Osborne have allowed the government to lose focus like this when (a) the Labour Party has become a source of amusement or despair according to taste and (b) the government has so many hard yards to work through?

    And yet you defend the right of rich parents to take their bright kids out of state schools to pay for selective education for their children. Hmmmm.
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921
    DavidL said:

    Still can't help feeling that the clever grammar school kids have been moved out and the secondary modern stream has taken over. Would Osborne have allowed the government to lose focus like this when (a) the Labour Party has become a source of amusement or despair according to taste and (b) the government has so many hard yards to work through?

    Nah, he'd have been tinkering needlessly with the next budget.

    This is actual, meaty policy. Not virtue signalling. It is great to be a Tory this morning.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
    So if you're bright you've got find your own way in life?

    I've said on here before that I have two gripes with my education. One, my school didn't have a sixth form. I got absolutely no guidance from my school on what A-Levels to pick with a view to what I could do at university. Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).
    Bright kids do find a way as you did. The less bright need more help and intervention to make them useful citizens.
    Oh I am a useful citizen. Jack of all trades, master of none, in a dead end job making my (privately educated) superiors look good.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122
    Icarus said:

    felix said:

    Icarus said:

    If grammar schools are better -the point of the exercise - the others must be worse.

    The point is different not better. Maybe you should have gone to a grammar school :)
    Guisborough Grammar.
    clearly not one of the 'better' ones :)
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
  • DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.
    The reform was academies, freeing them from local authority control and allowing them to set their own wages etc.

    Allowing them to tinker with the entry selection criteria to favour those who will do well academucally is finetuning (and a logical progression of academies) not major reform.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Moses_ said:

    Jonathan said:

    Its got the left chewing bricks, what's not to like.??.

    Maybe May is trying to save Labour with this bonkers grammars for all policy. It's refreshing for Labour to feel united and closer to public sentiment.
    "First we asked: “Would you support or oppose re-introducing grammar schools across the whole of Great Britain?’” The result was emphatic. Just over half the public, 53 per cent, support the idea while only 20 per cent oppose it. (The remaining 27 per cent don’t know.) Though the margins vary—Conservatives and Ukip supporters back grammar schools far more emphatically than Labour or Lib Dem voters—supporters out number opponents in every political and demographic group"

    http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/peter-kellner/should-we-bring-back-grammar-schools


    As always the lefties are out of touch....
    Aren't you missing out when they rephrased he question as pointing out that the majority of kids would not go to Grammar schools opposition shot up and support dropped under 50%
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    As an aside, I see Liam Fox is (sadly) living up to my expectations. Does anyone truly believe his arrogant and abrasive nature makes him the best person to negotiate us trade agreements with countries outside the EU?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    rcs1000 said:

    As an aside, I see Liam Fox is (sadly) living up to my expectations. Does anyone truly believe his arrogant and abrasive nature makes him the best person to negotiate us trade agreements with countries outside the EU?

    No.
  • PlatoSaidPlatoSaid Posts: 10,383
    How to use YouGov's stats to create a great pen picture

    Actual lol

    https://t.co/61M6Iph13N
  • Jonathan said:

    PClipp said:

    MTimT said:

    RobD said:

    on topic - I sort of agree. Perhaps I am not old enough to realise just how great grammars were, and it is especially confusing if every school gets a chance to be a grammar.
    I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....

    Rob, you forget that all our kids are above average.
    More than that, Mr T. All our children are in the most brilliant 20%. The other 80% will have to go to secondary moderns, and the Conservatives have no plans for creating any of those.

    The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.

    First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
    Whilst we have been distracted by Brexit fallout and Labour woes, this government has been chalking up a record number of policy u turns, and defeats.

    They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.

    Yep, this is - at best - an utterly mediocre government. It couldn't be otherwise with figures such as Fox, Johnson, Davis, Greening and Leadsom sitting round the cabinet table. As I wrote in my piece last week, this may actually help get rid of Corbyn in the end. Trailing a hapless, right wing Tory government in the polls and losing out to it electorally will eventually lead to the non-lunatic Corbynistas (arounf 50% I reckon) to question their support for Corbyn. That process has clearly begun among the pre-September 2015 cohort.

    Utterly mediocre governments are what we have almost continually in this country.

    And anyone who Labour could replace Corbyn with would be - at best - utterly mediocre as well.

    Mediocre would be a major improvement on what Labour has now :-)

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    With the willy waving by Juncker et al about how britain must be given a crap deal to make them suffer pour les encouragement of the autres...

    I am reminded of Rhodesian UDI. When this small land locked country declared UDI Wilson imposed sweeping sanctions with the co operation of the rest of the UN essentially blocking trade with them - far more than a few WTO tariffs.

    It was confidently asserted that Rhodesia would be brought to its knees in weeks. Alas for Wilson their economy boomed they managed to thumb their nose at the international community for years.

    Well, Juncker is gone as soon as the new Spanish PM is elected (unless by some miracle the Socialists get in in a new election, and he suddenly gains an ally). So, it's fairly meaningless.

    But most importantly, everything anyone says at this point is just posturing. The EU wants us to believe it will be ruthless and be willing to sacrifice its own economic recovery (it won't). The UK wants the EU to believe that it's very happy to have no kind of FTA with the bloc and go straight to WTO (it isn't).
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    DavidL said:

    tlg86 said:

    Chris said:

    I've never in my life heard an explanation of how grammar schools achieve anything that can't achieved much more efficiently by streaming within comprehensives.

    In comprehensives you can stream differently for different subjects and move people between streams if necessary. In a grammar system you make a clumsy, once-and-for-all decision based on a single test at an arbitrary age.

    That's a very fair point. What I would do is ban schools from having different class sizes. My Year 11 maths class (top set) had 38 of us in it. Why should resources be concentrated on those on the C/D border?
    Because clever well motivated kids are so much easier to teach and our economy is so much more affected by the success or failure at the C/D interchange. If this ridiculous policy is insisted upon I would say that the secondary moderns must be much better resourced with better paid teachers. Anything else simply creates more social division.
    So if you're bright you've got find your own way in life?

    I've said on here before that I have two gripes with my education. One, my school didn't have a sixth form. I got absolutely no guidance from my school on what A-Levels to pick with a view to what I could do at university. Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).
    Bright kids do find a way as you did. The less bright need more help and intervention to make them useful citizens.
    Oh I am a useful citizen. Jack of all trades, master of none, in a dead end job making my (privately educated) superiors look good.
    Well we all know that they need people like you to make good their deficiencies. If we didn't have such people nothing would get done at all.
  • DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
    Mo method is perfect but evidence based decisions are likely to prove more effective than anecdote based decisions.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
    But if we have a ten year test, looking at three different council areas, and being able to compare performance before and after the introduction of grammars, we'll be looking at perhaps 24 new grammar schools, which should even it out.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122
    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
  • Paul_BedfordshirePaul_Bedfordshire Posts: 3,632
    edited September 2016
    Here in Central Beds, thanks to a backbench revolt in the old Bedfordshire CC led by then Flitwick councillor Steve Male, we still have prep schools which we call middle schools and jolly good they are too.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    There are three mistakes people keep making with the grammar school policy, and will probably continue to make no matter what Theresa May, or anyone else, says:

    (1) The return of Secondary Moderns
    (2) The return of the 11+
    (3) The fact they will benefit the Middle Class only.

    Theresa May has explicitly ruled out the first. There will be no return to Secondary Moderns. There will continue to be a diverse provision of free school, faith school, academies and non-selective schools.

    On the second, the plans include for children to join not at 11, but at 14 and 16 as well, and take on students from non-selective schools for certain subjects.

    And, on the third, there will be a requirement for grammars to admit a large proportion from those on free school meals, or from poor backgrounds, or directly sponsor a non-selective school in a poor area.

    Don't be daft. In a town served by two schools, one becomes a grammar. What happens to the other? Will it become a grammar too? If not, it becomes a de facto secondary modern.
    How will they decide which one becomes the grammar?
    According to May both can. Bonkers.
    And likely one will have lower acceptance criteria to fill places.

    All this is doing is allowing academies to select by an academic measure rather than a proxy. So no real change.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    We'll have to get some right wing educationalists in to perform @rcs1000's study.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    RobD said:

    Austria says wrong if Germany, Italy, France dominate Brexit debate - Reuters

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2016/09/09/uk-britain-eu-austria-idukkcn11f2k8

    '"Small countries should not be overruled," he said.'

    LOL. Welcome to the EU :)
    Quite. The eu does give them all a seat at the table, but bigger is still bigger. Sorry Austria.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
    Mo method is perfect but evidence based decisions are likely to prove more effective than anecdote based decisions.
    I can't dispute that but education is something most people think they know about because they had one for good or ill. And on a small scale genuine passion can make a difference. That was the thinking behind Academies and it had some merit.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Here in Central Beds, thanks to a backbench revolt in the old Bedfordshire CC led by then Flitwick councillor Steve Male, we still have prep schools which we call middle schools and jolly good they are too.

    You live in Bedfordshire??
  • DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.
    Governments meddle.

    Do I take it you're opposed to City Region Mayors, HS2, Hinckley C and all the other detritus of Osborne's meddling mania ?

    If this government's educational meddling is restricted to new grammar schools - probably no more than a dozen nationwide - then you should be very satisfied.

  • Jonathan said:

    Breaking News, May to apply education policy to the NHS.

    At the new "grammar hospitals", doctors will be able select the cases they know they can treat. Results are going to go through the roof.

    The more difficult, chronic and terminal cases will be able to go to "faith hospitals".

    Or secondary cancer moderns as they will be known.
  • JonathanDJonathanD Posts: 2,400
    edited September 2016

    DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.

    Allowing them to tinker with the entry selection criteria to favour those who will do well academucally is finetuning (and a logical progression of academies) not major reform.
    No it completely destroys the point of Goves reform. In a market the consumer LP should be the one with the power and choice, not the producer. This is basic Tory market theory.

    Schools should not be able to chose the children that attend, only parents should have that power.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Jonathan said:

    Breaking News, May to apply education policy to the NHS.

    At the new "grammar hospitals", doctors will be able select the cases they know they can treat. Results are going to go through the roof.

    The more difficult, chronic and terminal cases will be able to go to "faith hospitals".

    You know they've actually done randomised clinical trials on player's effect on cardiovascular outcomes?
  • rcs1000 said:

    As an aside, I see Liam Fox is (sadly) living up to my expectations. Does anyone truly believe his arrogant and abrasive nature makes him the best person to negotiate us trade agreements with countries outside the EU?

    That's not his job. His job is to be part of the team that fails to deliver a viable Brexit plan, and gets dramatically fired for it, thus buying valuable time in which the government can not do anything.
  • felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    Why not just go and visit Finland? There is a test on a national scale. As Wikipedia writes: "The Finnish strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education."

    Finland in top educational attainment in world.

    So what are they doing in these comprehensives that is different?
  • Jonathan said:

    PClipp said:

    MTimT said:

    RobD said:

    on topic - I sort of agree. Perhaps I am not old enough to realise just how great grammars were, and it is especially confusing if every school gets a chance to be a grammar.
    I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....

    Rob, you forget that all our kids are above average.
    More than that, Mr T. All our children are in the most brilliant 20%. The other 80% will have to go to secondary moderns, and the Conservatives have no plans for creating any of those.

    The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.

    First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
    Whilst we have been distracted by Brexit fallout and Labour woes, this government has been chalking up a record number of policy u turns, and defeats.

    They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.

    Yep, this is - at best - an utterly mediocre government. It couldn't be otherwise with figures such as Fox, Johnson, Davis, Greening and Leadsom sitting round the cabinet table. As I wrote in my piece last week, this may actually help get rid of Corbyn in the end. Trailing a hapless, right wing Tory government in the polls and losing out to it electorally will eventually lead to the non-lunatic Corbynistas (arounf 50% I reckon) to question their support for Corbyn. That process has clearly begun among the pre-September 2015 cohort.

    It's good to keep optimistic, but it doesn't look like the non-lunatics will get rid of Corbyn in time for the next GE.

    I agree. But this was always going to be the case. My worry was the hard left would take Labour over forever. I don't think that will happen now.

  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741
    Morning all :)

    I've not commented on the whole "grammar" school debate for a number of reasons. I don't have much personal stake in education - I'm more interested in the bricks and mortar than what happens in the classrooms. I went to a good school and learnt a lot but had a bad education in that I was almost wholly unprepared for life after school.

    From my limited experience, it's my observation that what a school is called - Free, Academy, Foundation, Grant Maintained, Grammar, Secondary Modern etc - isn't all that important. Successful schools seem to require good leadership which fosters a strong community spirit and a positive feedback from parents which encourages a good atmosphere for learning and development.

    It's no more than what creates a successful business or an effective local authority. Getting hung up on a mantra that particular types of schools with particular titles have to be successful is as absurd as the notion all private organisations are inherently better run than all publicly-funded organisations.

    Strip away the pointless ideology and building successful schools isn't difficult if you can get the right people in place - that's why some successful school head teachers command a huge salary - and provide continuity and stability for them to build the right organisation and culture.
  • Paul_BedfordshirePaul_Bedfordshire Posts: 3,632
    edited September 2016
    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    The added value of grammar schools is an instinctive thing not easily measureable.

    Basically the added value of grammar schools is that your kids are segregated from and prevented from coming under the inluence of kids like this lot or worse

    https://goo.gl/images/wkXGe4
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.
    Governments meddle.

    Do I take it you're opposed to City Region Mayors, HS2, Hinckley C and all the other detritus of Osborne's meddling mania ?

    If this government's educational meddling is restricted to new grammar schools - probably no more than a dozen nationwide - then you should be very satisfied.

    How is Hinckley C meddling? It is another very difficult decision to be sure, one that will impact on our competitiveness as a nation for several decades one way or another. Will we have too little base load without it or will we have too expensive power with it?

    There are too many serious questions in the intray to waste time and political energy on frivolities.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    tlg86 said:

    . Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).

    Without wishing to sound facetious if someone put a child good at maths and bad at English in front of me and told me to educate them I'd focus on the English rather than the Maths.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
    Mo method is perfect but evidence based decisions are likely to prove more effective than anecdote based decisions.
    I can't dispute that but education is something most people think they know about because they had one for good or ill. And on a small scale genuine passion can make a difference. That was the thinking behind Academies and it had some merit.
    Anecdote in place of evidence makes for appalling decision making. And that's something that's been demonstrated across an enormous number of different sectors - medicine, business, etc.
  • Ian Dunt ✔ @IanDunt
    Clegg's 2nd paper on Brexit is a brilliant and readable 8-page description of the truck that's about to hit us
    http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/mailings/4093/attachments/original/International_trade.pdf?1473331526
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    The added value of grammar schools is an instinctive thing not easily measureable.

    Basically the added value of grammar schools is that your kids are segregated from and prevented from coming under the inluence of kids like this lot or worse

    https://goo.gl/images/wkXGe4
    Either it improves results, or it doesn't.
    Either it improves life outcomes, or it doesn't.
    Either it improves social mobility, or it doesn't.

    All these things are measurable.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    JonathanD said:

    DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.

    Allowing them to tinker with the entry selection criteria to favour those who will do well academucally is finetuning (and a logical progression of academies) not major reform.
    No it completely destroys the point of Goves reform. In a market the consumer LP should be the one with the power and choice, not the producer. This is basic Tory market theory.

    Schools should not be able to chose the children that attend, only parents should have that power.
    For some reason Paul loves the idea of Producer oriented protections that limit Consumer choice when it comes to education.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    I wonder if it is beginning to dawn that June 2016 not May 2015 was the real catastrophe for Libreralism.

    One faction of the old Liberal Party did badly in 2015, but the other two factions, the Liberal Unionists and National Liberals (known as Wets in the 1980s) who had captured the Conservative Party under a self declared ('I am a Liberal conservative') Liberal prime minister David Cameron, continued Liberal policies like supporting Europeani integration and opposing grammar schools.

    Now they are gone and it is becoming clear that PM May, who few knew her real political philosophy - she was clever enough to make liberal noises of talismatic liberal issues like Gay Marriage and give tepid support to the party line on the EU so retain a great office of state through the Liberal government years - is a very traditional and conservative Conservative whos pitch is to the lower middle classes at the upper echelons expense and is building a power base of essex men type voters who defected from Labour under thatcher and recent labour defectors to UKIP.

    The right have won the civil war that started when thatcher was deposed.

    Ultimately this is because the Liberal wing of the party who took control in 1990 could never win more tban a wafer thin majority and were denied the large majority needed to purge the right.

    Now as May parks her tanks on Labour and UKIPs lawn, it is the right who will soon have the large majority.

    You need to brush up your history.

    Thatcher was never a Conservative - she was a Gladstonian Liberal.

    Cameron wasn't a Liberal Unionist - he was a Christian Democrat.

    May, i suspect - but unproven - is targetting a Disraelian motif (although that was little for than opportunistic gesture politics together with some serious submarine reforms). The Liberal Unionists - the heirs to Derby and Hartington - are cheering her on
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,122
    TOPPING said:

    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    We'll have to get some right wing educationalists in to perform @rcs1000's study.
    Lol - the issue is a serious one unfortunately and quite subtle.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
    Mo method is perfect but evidence based decisions are likely to prove more effective than anecdote based decisions.
    I can't dispute that but education is something most people think they know about because they had one for good or ill. And on a small scale genuine passion can make a difference. That was the thinking behind Academies and it had some merit.
    Anecdote in place of evidence makes for appalling decision making. And that's something that's been demonstrated across an enormous number of different sectors - medicine, business, etc.
    But it is entirely possible for a strongly motivated group to achieve exceptional results. It is when that is thought to be the answer and things are scaled up you run into problems.
  • For those who now are claiming that immediate job losses weren't promised if Leave won here's something from the day AFTER the referendum:

    ‘ If you perchance thought that your London banking job would be safe with Britain outside the European Union, you were seemingly wrong. Consultants working for leading strategy firms in London say banks have activated their contingency plans and that the London job cuts are about to come thick and fast.

    “You’re looking at anything from 50,000 to 70,000 London finance jobs being moved overseas in the next 12 months,” predicts one consultant working with one of the top finance strategy firms in the City. “Jobs are going to be cut, and those cuts are going to start next week.” ‘

    http://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/248265/london-banking-redundancies-brexit/

    Eleven full weeks after the Leave vote and do we have any announcements of 'those cuts are going to start next week' ?

    If that article is correct there should have been 10-15,000 job cuts already.
  • Paul_BedfordshirePaul_Bedfordshire Posts: 3,632
    edited September 2016
    TOPPING said:

    Here in Central Beds, thanks to a backbench revolt in the old Bedfordshire CC led by then Flitwick councillor Steve Male, we still have prep schools which we call middle schools and jolly good they are too.

    You live in Bedfordshire??
    Indeed. Did you think Bedfordshire was my name?

    How else do you think I ended up at an impromptu PB meet up with Mr V yesterday on Thameslink when I discovered the chap sitting next to me was also looking at PB on his smartphone on the way into London....
  • Moses_Moses_ Posts: 4,865
    edited September 2016
    Alistair said:

    Moses_ said:

    Jonathan said:

    Its got the left chewing bricks, what's not to like.??.

    Maybe May is trying to save Labour with this bonkers grammars for all policy. It's refreshing for Labour to feel united and closer to public sentiment.
    "First we asked: “Would you support or oppose re-introducing grammar schools across the whole of Great Britain?’” The result was emphatic. Just over half the public, 53 per cent, support the idea while only 20 per cent oppose it. (The remaining 27 per cent don’t know.) Though the margins vary—Conservatives and Ukip supporters back grammar schools far more emphatically than Labour or Lib Dem voters—supporters out number opponents in every political and demographic group"

    http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/peter-kellner/should-we-bring-back-grammar-schools


    As always the lefties are out of touch....
    Aren't you missing out when they rephrased he question as pointing out that the majority of kids would not go to Grammar schools opposition shot up and support dropped under 50%
    Nope

    Of course they had to rephrase the question to get a result they wanted. I note I gave three examples and you picked one to support your view. I take no view on the benefit of grammars neither am I going to get drawn into the politic but I do consider learning styles to be important as I mentioned previously.

    There will always be brighter pupils who learn quickly as opposed to some that take longer but do get there in the end. The present situation resulted in classes learning at the speed of the slowest pupil. That didn't benefit the fastest or the slowest as both would end up frustrated. The slowest or those with challenges would be more recently separated for "one to one" away from their mates. That increases costs , time and certainly if not done affects the chances of other pupils. Not nice for the one separated though.

    It's learning styles and speeds that need to be taken into account. This must make the teachers jobs very challenging and where different approaches and styles of teaching would benefit and help level the playing field. Can that be done in the same class or school? Personally I don't think so and we disadvantage those who need a different style.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Education is one of those areas I don't quite understand why ut needs to be so very complicated. But leaving that aside, apparently not all conservatives will like the plan, the opposition parties will love this fight and so apparently with the educational establishment, so if it happens at all it will probably be a fudge.

    So as figurehead policies go to define the tone of her premiership it doesn't seem that amazing for May, but the early options might be limited and she needs something to inspire the troops for more awkward times to come.
  • rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Experiments such as this are usually ruled out on ethics grounds. What happens to the kids whose futures get screwed if the experiment turns out to be a disaster? This isn't experimenting on mice
  • Jonathan said:

    PClipp said:

    MTimT said:

    RobD said:

    on topic - I sort of agree. Perhaps I am not old enough to realise just how great grammars were, and it is especially confusing if every school gets a chance to be a grammar.
    I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....

    Rob, you forget that all our kids are above average.
    More than that, Mr T. All our children are in the most brilliant 20%. The other 80% will have to go to secondary moderns, and the Conservatives have no plans for creating any of those.

    The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.

    First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
    Whilst we have been distracted by Brexit fallout and Labour woes, this government has been chalking up a record number of policy u turns, and defeats.

    They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.

    Yep, this is - at best - an utterly mediocre government. It couldn't be otherwise with figures such as Fox, Johnson, Davis, Greening and Leadsom sitting round the cabinet table. As I wrote in my piece last week, this may actually help get rid of Corbyn in the end. Trailing a hapless, right wing Tory government in the polls and losing out to it electorally will eventually lead to the non-lunatic Corbynistas (arounf 50% I reckon) to question their support for Corbyn. That process has clearly begun among the pre-September 2015 cohort.

    It's good to keep optimistic, but it doesn't look like the non-lunatics will get rid of Corbyn in time for the next GE.

    I agree. But this was always going to be the case. My worry was the hard left would take Labour over forever. I don't think that will happen now.

    Non-lunatics and moderates must use the time wisely and work out what Labour is for in the mid 21st century. Social democracy all over Europe is failing to provide answers to the problems that people face, or believe they face, today.

    All activists and MPs should have John Harris in Guardian as required reading. He is doing sterling work finding out why Labour and social democracy no longer connect.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Alistair said:

    tlg86 said:

    . Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).

    Without wishing to sound facetious if someone put a child good at maths and bad at English in front of me and told me to educate them I'd focus on the English rather than the Maths.
    To the point where that child is made to feel like English is the be-all and end-all and that failure in that subject would render success elsewhere meaningless?
  • felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    Why not just go and visit Finland? There is a test on a national scale. As Wikipedia writes: "The Finnish strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education."

    Finland in top educational attainment in world.

    So what are they doing in these comprehensives that is different?
    Pfft. We doughty Brits have nothing to learn from those fir-thrashing surrender monkeys!

    Repeat ad nauseam as UK sinks down international league tables...
  • John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    Good morning all.

    No dog in this hunt, so don't care about grammar schools.

    I see Fox is living up to my low expectations. However, as the story is based on reportage, I can't see it living beyond a couple of news cycles. If the story is true, then it's probably based on businesses not cartwheeling with joy at the prospect of hard Brexit.
  • kle4 said:

    Education is one of those areas I don't quite understand why ut needs to be so very complicated. But leaving that aside, apparently not all conservatives will like the plan, the opposition parties will love this fight and so apparently with the educational establishment, so if it happens at all it will probably be a fudge.

    So as figurehead policies go to define the tone of her premiership it doesn't seem that amazing for May, but the early options might be limited and she needs something to inspire the troops for more awkward times to come.

    Its likely to be very good politically for May.

    It's a popular policy to the public and I suspect especially so to people who might vote Conservative.

    Its opposed by Labour and Tory posh boys.

    So it should gain May support from the anti-establishment mood which is so strong at present.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    tlg86 said:

    Alistair said:

    tlg86 said:

    . Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).

    Without wishing to sound facetious if someone put a child good at maths and bad at English in front of me and told me to educate them I'd focus on the English rather than the Maths.
    To the point where that child is made to feel like English is the be-all and end-all and that failure in that subject would render success elsewhere meaningless?
    Yes, I must crush their spirit.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    Here in Central Beds, thanks to a backbench revolt in the old Bedfordshire CC led by then Flitwick councillor Steve Male, we still have prep schools which we call middle schools and jolly good they are too.

    You live in Bedfordshire??
    Indeed. Did you think Bedfordshire was my name?

    How else do you think I ended up at an impromptu PB meet up with Mr V yesterday on Thameslink when I discovered the chap sitting next to me was also looking at PB on his smartphone on the way into London....
    I know there's much that doesn't come over on the Internet.

    :wink:
  • Ian Dunt ✔ @IanDunt
    Clegg's 2nd paper on Brexit is a brilliant and readable 8-page description of the truck that's about to hit us
    http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/mailings/4093/attachments/original/International_trade.pdf?1473331526

    Interesting stuff. Yvette or Balls or David Miliband would have the government on the run on all this. Instead we have Corbyn and labour's pathetic civil war.
  • Paul_BedfordshirePaul_Bedfordshire Posts: 3,632
    edited September 2016
    Alistair said:

    JonathanD said:

    DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.

    Allowing them to tinker with the entry selection criteria to favour those who will do well academucally is finetuning (and a logical progression of academies) not major reform.
    No it completely destroys the point of Goves reform. In a market the consumer LP should be the one with the power and choice, not the producer. This is basic Tory market theory.

    Schools should not be able to chose the children that attend, only parents should have that power.
    For some reason Paul loves the idea of Producer oriented protections that limit Consumer choice when it comes to education.
    Schools already choose the children that attend. What do you think a catchment area policy is?

    If the catchment area was abolished and they allowed riff raff from luton in the place would go to pot overnight.

    Actually it might be better for everyone if academic selection meant that bright kids in Luton could also go to a school where there is discipline and a culture of excellence rather than a daily battle against mayhem and gang warfare in the playground.

    ..and people like me couldnt guarantee a top rate free state education for my kids because I could afford to buy a place in an agreeable Bedfordshire Market Town a clear 10 miles from the ghastly council estates of Luton.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    rcs1000 said:

    As an aside, I see Liam Fox is (sadly) living up to my expectations. Does anyone truly believe his arrogant and abrasive nature makes him the best person to negotiate us trade agreements with countries outside the EU?

    That's not his job. His job is to be part of the team that fails to deliver a viable Brexit plan, and gets dramatically fired for it, thus buying valuable time in which the government can not do anything.
    If that was Mays plan then she is, quite against appearances, bonkers. What if he manages a good job, what if she gets blamed for picking him, what if it first allow a delay as much as she wants, why does she want to delay because a bad job being done at all, surely she wants to delay to enable a good job to be done?

    The government needs to do something at sone point, doing nothing is not an option, so why deliberately do a bad job?

    I find it much more likely may genuinely though the Brexit trio were the best ones who were also acceptable politically.
  • EssexitEssexit Posts: 1,956
    Are grammar schools the new AV?
  • Moses_Moses_ Posts: 4,865


    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    Why not just go and visit Finland? There is a test on a national scale. As Wikipedia writes: "The Finnish strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education."

    Finland in top educational attainment in world.

    So what are they doing in these comprehensives that is different?
    Pfft. We doughty Brits have nothing to learn from those fir-thrashing surrender monkeys!

    Repeat ad nauseam as UK sinks down international league tables...
    I believe this was the point I was making yesterday.

    The formative years addresses the learning styles as commonly it's a single teacher " I'm in Miss Pringles class" sort of thing. However the pupils are not only taught but as importantly taught how to learn in different ways. They are then able to adapt much easier to group learning at the senior levels

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Essexit said:

    Are grammar schools the new AV?

    Gods I hope not.
  • Essexit said:

    Are grammar schools the new AV?

    Maybe instead of an entrance exam the pupils could be selected by an AV vote of the goverors and teachers
  • Jonathan said:

    PClipp said:

    MTimT said:

    RobD said:

    on topic - I sort of agree. Perhaps I am not old enough to realise just how great grammars were, and it is especially confusing if every school gets a chance to be a grammar.
    I think I need to go back to the bunker for reprogramming....

    Rob, you forget that all our kids are above average.
    More than that, Mr T. All our children are in the most brilliant 20%. The other 80% will have to go to secondary moderns, and the Conservatives have no plans for creating any of those.

    The fact is that, although the Conservatives are brilliant at sound bites, they are absolutely hopeless at thinking things through.

    First we had the EU Referendum, led by Tories on both sides, with no plans to deal with the outcome. Now we have highly selective grammar schools for absolutely everybody. Mrs May just hasn`t a clue.
    Whilst we have been distracted by Brexit fallout and Labour woes, this government has been chalking up a record number of policy u turns, and defeats.

    They are, in short, a bit rubbish. What is tragic, is that we don't have an opposition primed and ready to take over. Corbyn is flattering the govt.

    Yep, this is - at best - an utterly mediocre government. It couldn't be otherwise with figures such as Fox, Johnson, Davis, Greening and Leadsom sitting round the cabinet table. As I wrote in my piece last week, this may actually help get rid of Corbyn in the end. Trailing a hapless, right wing Tory government in the polls and losing out to it electorally will eventually lead to the non-lunatic Corbynistas (arounf 50% I reckon) to question their support for Corbyn. That process has clearly begun among the pre-September 2015 cohort.

    It's good to keep optimistic, but it doesn't look like the non-lunatics will get rid of Corbyn in time for the next GE.

    I agree. But this was always going to be the case. My worry was the hard left would take Labour over forever. I don't think that will happen now.

    Non-lunatics and moderates must use the time wisely and work out what Labour is for in the mid 21st century. Social democracy all over Europe is failing to provide answers to the problems that people face, or believe they face, today.

    All activists and MPs should have John Harris in Guardian as required reading. He is doing sterling work finding out why Labour and social democracy no longer connect.

    Yep, completely agree.

  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    The school head who sent pupils back home on the first day if they weren’t properly dressed was spot on. The rot starts early and has to be nipped in the bud. Discipline and school ethos are more important than ideological nit picking about types of schools. If I were a teacher I’d much prefer teaching in a school with “traditional values” and discipline whether it was a comprehensive, academy, grammar or whatever.
  • Moses_Moses_ Posts: 4,865

    Ian Dunt ✔ @IanDunt
    Clegg's 2nd paper on Brexit is a brilliant and readable 8-page description of the truck that's about to hit us
    http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/mailings/4093/attachments/original/International_trade.pdf?1473331526

    Wasn't Clegg a big cheese in the EU at one point? I do believe he gets a very good pension from them as well. Anyway to your point about Cleggs 2nd paper.....
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Do I take it that those Conservative supporters here who oppose creating new grammar schools are also in favour in abolishing the existing grammar schools ?

    And if not why not ?

    The government has more important things to do than to muck about with educational structures once again. There has been too much of that already and a significant period of settling in is called for.
    Governments meddle.

    Do I take it you're opposed to City Region Mayors, HS2, Hinckley C and all the other detritus of Osborne's meddling mania ?

    If this government's educational meddling is restricted to new grammar schools - probably no more than a dozen nationwide - then you should be very satisfied.

    How is Hinckley C meddling? It is another very difficult decision to be sure, one that will impact on our competitiveness as a nation for several decades one way or another. Will we have too little base load without it or will we have too expensive power with it?

    There are too many serious questions in the intray to waste time and political energy on frivolities.
    Hinckley C is clearly government meddling as the government has set the price its output would be charged at.

    And there are always too many serious questions in the intray to waste time and political energy on frivolities.

    Yet frivolities are what governments concentrate on because they're easier and quicker or someone's vanity project.
  • John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503
    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    The problem with that is that there are almost an infinite number of variables in education. If the results are distorted by exceptional teachers or students then scaling up the "best" solution won't work.
    Mo method is perfect but evidence based decisions are likely to prove more effective than anecdote based decisions.
    I can't dispute that but education is something most people think they know about because they had one for good or ill. And on a small scale genuine passion can make a difference. That was the thinking behind Academies and it had some merit.
    Anecdote in place of evidence makes for appalling decision making. And that's something that's been demonstrated across an enormous number of different sectors - medicine, business, etc.
    But it is entirely possible for a strongly motivated group to achieve exceptional results. It is when that is thought to be the answer and things are scaled up you run into problems.
    People should Google the Hawthorne effect.
  • Paul_BedfordshirePaul_Bedfordshire Posts: 3,632
    edited September 2016
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Here in Central Beds, thanks to a backbench revolt in the old Bedfordshire CC led by then Flitwick councillor Steve Male, we still have prep schools which we call middle schools and jolly good they are too.

    You live in Bedfordshire??
    Indeed. Did you think Bedfordshire was my name?

    How else do you think I ended up at an impromptu PB meet up with Mr V yesterday on Thameslink when I discovered the chap sitting next to me was also looking at PB on his smartphone on the way into London....
    I know there's much that doesn't come over on the Internet.

    :wink:
    Although I tend sometimes to cultivate an image like the red faced chap in the picture in the link below, which I really ought to make my avatar..

    https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/610UGXn3N-L._SL1500_.jpg

    My head isnt as right wing as my heart sometimes wants to be when it goes all genghis khan.

    And sometimes Im playing devils advocate to flush out deeper thought on an issue.

    :smiley:
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Alistair said:

    tlg86 said:

    Alistair said:

    tlg86 said:

    . Two, my school was more concerned with what I wasn't good at (English) than what I was good at (Maths).

    Without wishing to sound facetious if someone put a child good at maths and bad at English in front of me and told me to educate them I'd focus on the English rather than the Maths.
    To the point where that child is made to feel like English is the be-all and end-all and that failure in that subject would render success elsewhere meaningless?
    Yes, I must crush their spirit.
    Chortle. This is a controversial point, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that the vast majority of my teachers were female. I remember a Question Time audience being appalled by Patrick Moore saying that we needed more male teachers, but I suspect he was right.
  • kle4 said:

    Education is one of those areas I don't quite understand why ut needs to be so very complicated. But leaving that aside, apparently not all conservatives will like the plan, the opposition parties will love this fight and so apparently with the educational establishment, so if it happens at all it will probably be a fudge.

    So as figurehead policies go to define the tone of her premiership it doesn't seem that amazing for May, but the early options might be limited and she needs something to inspire the troops for more awkward times to come.

    Its likely to be very good politically for May.

    It's a popular policy to the public and I suspect especially so to people who might vote Conservative.

    Its opposed by Labour and Tory posh boys.

    So it should gain May support from the anti-establishment mood which is so strong at present.
    Totally bonkers.

    There is no great demand in the country to bring back grammars. This is pure Tory nostalgism - see also national service.

    It is opposed by everyone in the reality-based community, which includes the mainstream media.

    With disquiet in her own party, this seems like a major mis-step. Don't see she can get a majority in parliament, and certainly not in the Lords. And hardly good reason to call a general election on.

    What's more, she's personally taken this on.
    Her own Ed Sec is unconvinced.

    May is marking her cards as someone who takes a very long time to make a decision - and then ignores all the evidence in favour of a policy last seriously debated twenty years ago.

    I fully expect the next big announcement to be the return of the cones hotline.

  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Here in Central Beds, thanks to a backbench revolt in the old Bedfordshire CC led by then Flitwick councillor Steve Male, we still have prep schools which we call middle schools and jolly good they are too.

    You live in Bedfordshire??
    Indeed. Did you think Bedfordshire was my name?

    How else do you think I ended up at an impromptu PB meet up with Mr V yesterday on Thameslink when I discovered the chap sitting next to me was also looking at PB on his smartphone on the way into London....
    I know there's much that doesn't come over on the Internet.

    :wink:
    Although I tend sometimes to cultivate an image like the red faced chap in the picture in the link below, which I really ought to make my avatar..

    https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/610UGXn3N-L._SL1500_.jpg

    My head isnt as right wing as my heart sometimes wants to be when it goes all genghis khan.

    And sometimes Im playing devils advocate to flush out deeper thought on an issue.

    :smiley:
    :smiley:
  • weejonnieweejonnie Posts: 3,820
    538 released a google survey.

    Florida: Trump +9
    North Carolina: Trump +9
    Iowa: Clinton +6
    Arizona: Tie
    New Hampshire: Clinton +14
    New Mexico: Trump +3
    Nevada: Clinton +1
    Ohio: Trump +6
    Kansas : Clinton +2
    Pennsylvania: Trump +2

    (Low samples in most of these - but interesting).
  • John_MJohn_M Posts: 7,503

    felix said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    This is an area where there should be no argument, no discussion and no debate. There should certainly be no recycling of anecdote.

    Instead, this is where evidence based policymaking should be used. Let's choose an LEA - perhaps two or three - and have an experiment. Decide on the terms of success: the proportion of pupils achieving very good marks, an improvement in social mobility; and also the terms of failure - i.e. do we have a very detrimental effect on the 80% of pupils who don't go to the grammar school.

    Then run the tests. You decide on the criteria ahead of time, and you test the hypothesis of whether it works. We should probably test MaxPB's suggestion too, and maybe one or two others.

    All the arguments and discussion and analysis in the world is no substitute for hard data. Let's get the data.

    Surely the Sutton Trust has done all that already?
    With Grammar schools it is often very difficult to demonstrate added value. A lot of the stats are based on a points score related to 5 GCSEs - most Grammar schools do way better than this but the extra results don't get measured - so the difference between them and good comprehensives is often masked. The same sometimes applies post-16. My school switched to the IB instead of A/L for kost students but for several years the outstanding results achieved were simply not included in the League tables. Also since most educationalists involved in research are very left-wing - the attempt to get robust and discriminating stats about performance is near impossible.
    The added value of grammar schools is an instinctive thing not easily measureable.

    Basically the added value of grammar schools is that your kids are segregated from and prevented from coming under the inluence of kids like this lot or worse

    https://goo.gl/images/wkXGe4
    It's always going to be anecdota on here, but looking back at my grammar days it wasn't so much the education that benefited me (my Father was an autodidact, hence so am I) as the opportunity to develop soft & social skills from mixing (and I mean this unironically) with my betters.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741
    Moses_ said:

    <

    Wasn't Clegg a big cheese in the EU at one point? I do believe he gets a very good pension from them as well. Anyway to your point about Cleggs 2nd paper.....

    So you mean he would be well informed and able to construct a coherent argument based on accurate knowledge rather than petty misconceptions, vindictiveness and ideological incomprehension ?

    Yes, I'd agree with that.

  • kle4 said:

    Education is one of those areas I don't quite understand why ut needs to be so very complicated. But leaving that aside, apparently not all conservatives will like the plan, the opposition parties will love this fight and so apparently with the educational establishment, so if it happens at all it will probably be a fudge.

    So as figurehead policies go to define the tone of her premiership it doesn't seem that amazing for May, but the early options might be limited and she needs something to inspire the troops for more awkward times to come.

    Its likely to be very good politically for May.

    It's a popular policy to the public and I suspect especially so to people who might vote Conservative.

    Its opposed by Labour and Tory posh boys.

    So it should gain May support from the anti-establishment mood which is so strong at present.
    Totally bonkers.

    There is no great demand in the country to bring back grammars. This is pure Tory nostalgism - see also national service.

    It is opposed by everyone in the reality-based community, which includes the mainstream media.

    With disquiet in her own party, this seems like a major mis-step. Don't see she can get a majority in parliament, and certainly not in the Lords. And hardly good reason to call a general election on.

    What's more, she's personally taken this on.
    Her own Ed Sec is unconvinced.

    May is marking her cards as someone who takes a very long time to make a decision - and then ignores all the evidence in favour of a policy last seriously debated twenty years ago.

    I fully expect the next big announcement to be the return of the cones hotline.

    When you used the phrase 'reality-based community' you lost the argument in all those areas which were blue on the referendum map.

    And that's why this issue is good for May politically.
  • Moses_ said:

    Ian Dunt ✔ @IanDunt
    Clegg's 2nd paper on Brexit is a brilliant and readable 8-page description of the truck that's about to hit us
    http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/mailings/4093/attachments/original/International_trade.pdf?1473331526

    Wasn't Clegg a big cheese in the EU at one point? I do believe he gets a very good pension from them as well. Anyway to your point about Cleggs 2nd paper.....
    Clegg was secretary to Leon Brittan, when he was EU TRADE commissioner. So he might know what he is talking about.
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